The first thing Kurt Busch had to do when he joined Furniture Row Racing was prove to his new team that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Busch, the 2004 Sprint Cup champion, had 24 career victories and was widely regarded as one of NASCAR’s most talented drivers. Yet he also had built a reputation as a brat and an all-around bad dude.

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Throughout a turbulent career with Roush Fenway Racing and Penske Racing, Busch was known as a hot-tempered driver who constantly berated his team and sometimes even his team owner when things didn’t go well. He had frequent run-ins with other drivers and spats with everyone from cops to the media.

So when he landed at Phoenix Racing in 2012 — after being banished by Penske — and then Furniture Row later that year, his teammates expected the worst.

“It’s funny, you work with people and the first thing that they tell you is, I expected worse,” Busch said. “But perception is reality, and I had to work on that. I couldn’t continue to fight it.”

After staying out of trouble and leading Furniture Row — a small, single-car team — to the Chase last year, Busch believes the perception about him is starting to change. He’s worked hard to change his image from petulant bad boy to outlaw racer.

“I was about producing results on the racetrack and putting on a good show and I think that’s now what the media is really circling around to, that we want to see those door donuts and the great side-by-side action and it’s not necessarily the personal, People Magazine-type stories, which I was trying to fight,” Busch said.

Busch’s transformation last year paid off when he landed a ride with another elite team, joining Stewart-Haas Racing for this season. After toiling with two underfunded teams the past two seasons, Busch has an opportunity to win and be a championship contender again.

He’s determined not to blow it.

“It’s an amazing opportunity that Gene (Haas) has given me and I’m not going to squander it away,” he said.

Stewart-Haas, which won the 2011 Cup championship with co-owner/driver Tony Stewart, expanded to four teams during the offseason, replacing Ryan Newman with Kevin Harvick, and adding a new fourth team for Busch.

Ironically, the combative Stewart is now joined by two of the most temperamental and fiery competitors in the sport in Busch and Harvick.

Busch and Harvick actually worked together last year as Furniture Row had a technical alliance with Harvick’s Richard Childress Racing team. The two drivers shared technical data and setup information and worked together to make both their cars competitive. It paid off with Busch taking Furniture Row to the Chase for the first time and Harvick winning four races and finishing third in the final standings.

It was Harvick who recommended that Haas and Stewart consider hiring Busch. While Haas orchestrated the deal, Stewart had to be convinced that starting a fourth team for Busch was the right move.

How were two drivers with sharp-edged personalities, who are no strangers to trouble, able to get along well enough to help each other last season?

“I think there was just a preconceived notion of who we were outside of the racer with the helmet on,” Busch said of he and Harvick. “When you have that helmet on, it changes a lot of guys. When Kevin has it on and I have it on … and Tony, we are very similar. So it was great for us to work together in the lounge and in debrief sessions and working on setups together so that Kevin could help explain that to Tony.”

Now Busch is not only paired with Harvick, but also with a driver who once was one of his biggest enemies. Busch and Stewart have had multiple disputes and run-ins on the track, including one when Stewart allegedly punched Busch inside the NASCAR hauler.

Busch says none of that matters when you’re teammates working toward a common goal.

“Tony and I are that same fiery competitor, and when you have two conflicting types of guys on the outside fighting each other, it’s very different when you are on the inside and you can understand one another and respect each other,” Busch said.

Busch is now considered a key asset at Stewart-Haas. With Stewart still recovering from a broken leg he suffered last season, Busch and Harvick have been charged with helping test cars for this season and assisting the organization regroup after an off year.

Newman made the Chase for Stewart-Haas last year but finished 11th in the standings. Stewart won just one race before missing the final 15 with his injury, while new driver Danica Patrick struggled to a 27th-place finish.

Now Stewart-Haas has two new drivers, three new crew chiefs and a fourth team being built from the ground up.

But Stewart believes Busch and Harvick will help turn the organization around quickly. He and Harvick are longtime friends, but he’s been equally impressed with Busch.

“He’s got a real good grasp on why things happen and how they need to happen and how they need to be structured to be successful,” Stewart said. “I feel like both Kurt and Kevin are better at that than I am. I feel like I am still more just a driver who can get in the car and go, but those guys can really analyze where programs are at.

“They are so in-tune with the mechanics of the car. They understand why they are making the changes they make. And that’s something that makes Kurt and Kevin a huge asset to us.”

Busch not only has improved his reputation and image off the track, but in the garage as well. Always considered an elite driver, he also is known as a racer who can dissect a car and provide valuable input on setups and strategy.

“That (reputation) comes from internal discussions and people crediting your opinions, and sometimes that fell on deaf ears at Penske Racing,” Busch said. “It has been great for that to have been seen over the past couple of years with Phoenix Racing taking a program and selling it and making money on it, and then with Furniture Row to parlay a car from 25th in points to a Chase contender.”

Busch now has an opportunity to win races again — he hasn’t won since 2011 — and return to the Chase. His No. 41 team, which has part of Newman’s crew from last season, is expected to show steady improvement throughout the season, and then make a run at the Chase in August and September.

“Tony expects to be a Chase-caliber program by September, which we all expect to be,” Busch said. “So there’s nice steady steps that we know we have to (take) to be championship-ready when the Chase rolls around.”

For now, Busch is just happy to be back where he belongs — with an elite team expected to be a contender.

“It is a group of racers here at Stewart-Haas,” he said. “I found it with the Furniture Row guys and with Phoenix Racing, and now we’ve got it on a big-time platform, a championship platform.”